This year will be my second waterfowl season and I want to learn how to call. I have been practicing for about a week or so now on a mediocre call that my grandpa received from a donation to Ducks Unlimited many years ago and I have a few questions. My quack is decent but for some reason I can't quite get the sound I'm looking for without giving a little grunt into the call. When I try using just air pressure I get a high pitched squeal. Is a little voice normal when blowing a call? Any suggestions?

Greenhead_Wrecker wrote:This year will be my second waterfowl season and I want to learn how to call. I have been practicing for about a week or so now on a mediocre call that my grandpa received from a donation to Ducks Unlimited many years ago and I have a few questions. My quack is decent but for some reason I can't quite get the sound I'm looking for without giving a little grunt into the call. When I try using just air pressure I get a high pitched squeal. Is a little voice normal when blowing a call? Any suggestions?

Nothing wrong with "talking into your call" a little as I was told once. I began by teaching myself and every call I made sounded tinny and awful. One day on a hunt a buddy told me you can get some real raspy, nasty quacks by literally saying the word "quat" into the call. That one piece of advice changed my approach to calling. Will it work for competition calling? No, but I personally could care less about a contest. When you're calling in the field your goal is to fool a duck and put meat onto the table. If it works it works.

Definitely find someone who can critique you (the key is to find someone who can actually call well too). Also find a pond somewhere with some tamie ducks and imitate them. Record yourself on your phone and critique yourself.

Also do yourself a huge favor and drop some money on a good call. Realize you'll always have limitations, but don't skrimp on quality equipment. If you expect your calling to be great one day, don't sell yourself short by buying the junk 20 dollar Buck Gardner pintail whistle/plastic mallard call combo at the big box store near you. That DU mallard call may be ok, but if it's that it probably could use a new set of reeds, and don't forget to clean it too.

Im 14. I taught myself how to call because my mentor never did because we cant blow calls in the house and he didnt want me to ruin the hunt. He did give me a mallard and teal call when i was 10. I focused more on the mallard. I figured out how to blow air into the call and the sounds to use from the Ducks Unlimited Website. Ive also learned a couple tricks and tips. When you blow air say "ten" this forced pressure from your lungs into the call. When you first start out keep your hand completely open at the end. Hand manipulation does not make much of a difference. If you want your call to sound more grainy you can either buy a new DC call that is made from wood or cover up more of the hole on the top of the call with your top lip when you blow into it. Learn the greeting call and quack. I have trouble with feed calls so we just use a mallard shaker. Hope this helps.

Greenhead_Wrecker wrote:This year will be my second waterfowl season and I want to learn how to call. I have been practicing for about a week or so now on a mediocre call that my grandpa received from a donation to Ducks Unlimited many years ago and I have a few questions. My quack is decent but for some reason I can't quite get the sound I'm looking for without giving a little grunt into the call. When I try using just air pressure I get a high pitched squeal. Is a little voice normal when blowing a call? Any suggestions?

Buy 2 things and one other thing:

1-Buy a DR-85 from Haydel's

2-Buy "The Art of Commanding Ducks" by Phil Robertson

3-Go to a spot where ducks hang out, listen to them. Do what they do.

This to a T. Exactly the route I went when I first learned how to call.

Also, you've got to have a good call to learn on. If you're planning on spending a little extra money on a good call you should check out the Echo Meat Hanger. It's definitely the easiest call to blow (DR) and one of the best sounding calls I own. My younger brother started learning how to call about a year ago on the meat hanger and he's already gotten good enough I'll let him chime in on some hunts this year. Last year we'd hide his calls the night before we'd hit the woods

I come from the school of learning to blow a single reed first. If you can blow a single reed you can pick up a double reed pretty easily most times. I'd find a single reed that isn't terribly hard to blow for you, and get after it. Don't purchase something because someone tells you. Find somewhere you can blow a few different calls, pick something out you like, get a CD and start calling.

Sorry guys...but when someone is learning how to call...and you say practice practice practice....that doesn't mean a hill of beans. If he is doing many things wrong, all he's doing is bad habits, by making the wrong notes. He then has to be taught when to make those notes...how to read the birds if you will. That will take longer to do..then learning how to call.Get someone good to teach you...if not...find a good dvd.Practice doing it all wrong..isn't going to get you no where fast...and will blemish your ego, when you try and blow your call..and the ducks flare.

CrazyDrake wrote:I come from the school of learning to blow a single reed first. If you can blow a single reed you can pick up a double reed pretty easily most times. I'd find a single reed that isn't terribly hard to blow for you, and get after it. Don't purchase something because someone tells you. Find somewhere you can blow a few different calls, pick something out you like, get a CD and start calling.

Buy this DVD and practice a few days a week for 15 to 20 minutes and you will be calling ducks in no time ! The Carlson instructional A to Z is a way better then the RNT instruction DVD. ( By far he best I have ever seen or heard. )

Lifes to short to sweat the small crap !Lighten up and have some fun ,before ya die !

callinfowl wrote:Buy this DVD and practice a few days a week for 15 to 20 minutes and you will be calling ducks in no time ! The Carlson instructional A to Z is a way better then the RNT instruction DVD. ( By far he best I have ever seen or heard. )

X2

STUMP

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1. Sound like a duck. No plastic, metal or wood contraptions can ever sound really like a real duck. Have you ever fished with a spinner? It looks and acts and sounds like anything in nature that fish see or hear, but yet they strike and hit at it. Same principle with duck calls. You must have a certain unique sound that attracts ducks, but don't fool yourself that you sound like a duck.

2. Special Expensive call. It's not the call and all the BS and hype about a certain call, it's the caller. A good caller can use a 40 year old Faulk and call ducks as good as anyone today.

3. Secret tuning, soundboards, special cut reeds, triple reeds and etc. Pretty soon you will be calling with 6 reeds just like some are brainwashed to shave with 6 blades when one blade will do. Duck calls are simple affairs. Practice year around just not before the duck season.

As a newbie myself (this is my second season of really pursuing waterfowl, and my first of actually seeing results), reading this has been helpful to me as well as (I'm sure) the OP.

One question I do have for the "learn a single before trying a double" guys, though:

I started last year with two double reeds because whatever I read last year suggested that they were easier to pick up and blow, whereas singles took more technique/practice, but were more versatile.

Over the course of last season, through the offseason, and into this season, I've since added a few single reeds (all have been cheapies until recently adding a daisy cutter)..and, from *my own newbie experience*, I can't for the life of me figure out the draw of double reeds.

Maybe I've developed bad form or something, but even before getting the DC, I've sounded way better (to my own ears), and could do more with any single compared to a double. The only benefit I found was that in January, my singles seemed to freeze and stick more easily than the doubles...but aside from that, the singles held all of the advantages. Perhaps the biggest advantage being that all of my doubles seem to have more of a 'buzzing' quality to the sound, whereas the singles don't do that, and if anything have more of a 'clacking' sound...which to my ears sounds a lot more like a duck.

Thanks for all the feedback fellas. I went ahead and ordered a Gander Valley Custom Calls Homewrecker set-up as a single reed and the Carlson Calls "Duck Calling A to Z" CD Set. I'm going to practice as often as I can and hopefully with time I get the hang of it and participate in calling with the guys.